


In Enemy Lungs

by dhasenan



Category: Honor Harrington Series - David Weber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 02:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9153811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhasenan/pseuds/dhasenan
Summary: Harkness got root access to all the Tepes's shipboard systems. What if he'd used that access more productively?





	

Horace Harkness had spent the weeks of transit to Hades productively. The Peeps had no notion of security—they hosted everything, from games to essential ship services, on the same network, and the only authentication they had was at the perimeter.

With a bit of social manipulation, he'd gotten Candleman to give him high-level access to the entertainment systems. Candleman was keen to get any advantage he could wrest with the LAC sim games, and Harkness just happened to know how to, ah, “massage” their programming to give him one.

From there, it had been child's play to turn off the environmental monitoring. He'd needed a _bit_ more work to figure out how to back everything up in just the right way. And to locate enough rebreathers. Plus there was some work with security cameras. Disabling the coms for _just_ long enough took a bit more thinking. But on the whole, the job was surprisingly easy.

The first step was to prevent Candleman and Johnson from noticing his absence. The method was simple and brutal. Candleman's bunk was just below his, so he slipped quietly to the ground, covered the blond corporal's mouth with one broad hand, and stabbed his other flattened fist into the man's throat. And again, just for good measure, though the crack of broken cartilage told him the first blow had sufficed. He held the corporal tight, leaning on his chest, until he stopped moving.

Johnson next, on the other side of the room. Candleman's thrashing had just barely roused him, and he mumbled “Five more minutes” as Harkness leaned over the bunk. Harkness took Johnson's head in both hands, and Johnson just had time to open his eyes in confusion before Harkness snapped his neck.

Harkness stood, hands trembling. That part was finished, the most distasteful part. He'd fought plenty, killed often enough as a member of the Royal Manticoran Navy, but he'd never killed someone with his bare hands. His face white as the grave, he pulled Johnson's hand over to unlock the man's locker and pulled out the standard issue police toolbelt: pulser, flechette gun, spare ammunition, multitool, communicator, flashlight, baton, all there. Likewise with Candleman's locker.

In a few minutes, he was dressed and kitted out as Candleman, with Johnson's gear stuffed into a rucksack. Along with four rebreathers he'd stolen a few days prior. After that, it was off to the races.

* * *

The _Tepes_ had one brig, even though it was significantly larger than was standard for a _Warlord_ -class battlecruiser. While StateSec officers might be somewhat reluctant to house all prisoners in the same area, it was wiser, all told, to keep all the prisoners in a location designed for security in advance. Individual cells with solid doors and solid soundproofing, to prevent collaboration between prisoners. It would take a telepath to defeat that—and the only one on hand was too injured to plan a prison break. Beyond that, the doors were designed to open only one at a time, so the prisoners couldn't rush the guards.

Because of that, there were only four guards on duty during the day, and only two at night.

Chief Harkness arrived a few minutes past 2am on the ship's clock.

Corporal de los Santos looked up from the security station as he walked up. “This is a restricted area, Corporal.”

“Oh, sorry,” Harknesss said, unslinging his rucksack and rifling in it. “I had orders...if I can just find them...” His hand came out holding a flechette gun, and before they could react, both de los Santos and her partner, Private de Tocqueville, died, perforated by a dozen tiny darts.

Deftly, Harkness pulled out his minicomputer and plugged it into one of the network jacks at the guard station. A few commands later and the air scrubbers were pumping out carbon monoxide, and all the doors were sealed shut. They'd only respond to Corporal Johnson's and Private Candleman's IDs.

A glance at the prisoner roster identified which prisoner occupied which cells. Harkness popped open Commodore Harrington's first. The commodore was a sight to make his eyes sore, considering her treatment in the past weeks, but the chief limited himself to a wince before rousing her.

“Ma'am,” he said quietly as she woke, “you'll need a rebreather.” She donned the one he handed her without comment, then slowly, stiffly, rose to her feet. “We're a bit short on rebreathers,” he admitted, “but there's an emergency supplies cabinet on the way.”

Next was LaFollet, followed by Montoya. Harkness himself donned the last mask before freeing the rest of the prisoners—thirty people in all. Then he began signing his plan to them in the guard room. They didn't all fit, but those who could see relayed to those who couldn't.

“We will head to the aft port boat bay,” he signed. His accent was rather stuffy—he'd learned to sign in secondary school, taught by a punctilious professor who was somewhat full of himself, and hadn't had opportunity to learn another accent. “I shall release carbon monoxide into the air shortly. This will kill the Republic personnel on the ship. We will wait out the noxious gas in the pinnace. I have slaved the ship's communications systems to the pinnace.”

“Carbon monoxide exposure isn't something you want to play around with,” Montoya signed back, rather more adroitly. “The rebreather masks might not be enough.”

Harkness nodded. “I shall increase the oxygen levels in the pinnace to maximum once we board,” he signed. “Sadly, some of us will likely be exposed. However, the members of the Republic will be far more exposed. So. To avoid notice, I have plotted a route to the shuttle bay using engineering accessways. They should be deserted at this hour. However, we must first acquire more rebreathers to ensure our health. Any questions?”

There were none. “Lay on, MacDuff,” Commodore Harrington signed.

“Let's go.”

A battlecruiser with a crew of two thousand never truly sleeps. However, the ship's nighttime sees a significant reduction in the number of crewmembers engaging in R&R, lower staffing for security, routine maintenance is generally on hold. So it wasn't surprising that the corridors were empty all the way to the Sector 8C environmental hazards supply closet.

From there, it was a quick trip to the nearest engineering accessway, followed by a fair bit of crawling. By this time, the carbon monoxide was well saturating the air.

Twenty minutes in, they finally reached the shuttle bay.

The shuttle bay had its own officer of the watch. There were no engineering side accessways to the pinnace, nor to the traffic control station. Without prompting, LaFollet ordered (using opaque hand signals) Armsman Candless to find a way around. Candless took Sergeant Nieves, one of the two surviving Marines from the _Prince Adrian_ , and headed back into the standard passages.

For tense minutes, Harkness followed their progress on the ship's security cameras, as they encountered a wandering ensign and shot him to death in a moment, as they hid the corpse in a nearby locker, as they entered the traffic control center and murdered the two officers on duty.

“We're clear,” he signed. The Manticoran squad advanced through an access panel into a hallway, passed through an airlock, and finally made their way aboard the pinnace. A few minutes later, Candless and Nieves joined them.

Harkness was already increasing the pinnace's oxygen concentration to near-pure and raising the pressure. “Nobody light a match,” he said aloud, taking off his rebreather mask.

And then it was a matter of waiting.

* * *

Lieutenant Castellano and Ensign de la Cruz spent a fair bit of time remotely operating the _Tepes_ 's external comms. Between them and Harkness, it was relatively simple to forward everything to the pinnace. It took a bit more work to shut out the rest of the ship, and some more still to craft an appropriate cover story for what was happening on the ship. They sent a dispatch to Hades Station:

Several prisoners staged a breakout with the assistance of a crewmember. The problem has been dealt with. We no longer have prisoners to transfer to the surface. However, communications have suffered minor damage.

Stand by for flight plan. 

Harkness and Candless, meanwhile, watched the shipboard cameras like treecats stalking an unsuspecting celery.

Ten minutes in, the first crewmembers began staggering around drunkenly and vomiting. Fifteen minutes and Medical began to suspect carbon monoxide poisoning. Harkness's quick fingers punched in the command to disable internal communications just before they could make an announcement—and then sealed the doors shut so they couldn't escape. With the medical oxygen they had on hand, they would probably survive, along with their handful of patients, but that wouldn't be much of a problem.

One of the more enterprising members of the engineering crew managed to find a skinsuit. _That_ would have to be dealt with, but with nearly eighteen minutes of exposure, she was already fumbling and vomiting. She stumbled around a bit and ended up choking on her own vomit.

In the fore port boat bay, a pair of techs had been tinkering with one of the assault shuttles and were spared—until they left, an hour in, and absorbed a lethal dose of carbon monoxide.

Five hours in, Captain McKeon and Commander DeGroat took the watch, declared an all clear, and set the life support systems back in working order. Even sick bay had run out of medical oxygen. It took most of the rest of the day for the restored CO alarms to stop shrieking.

Finally, a day later, Commodore Harrington claimed control over the _Tepes_. There were no Havenite survivors.

Lt Castellano found a handy live face and voice mapping package in the propaganda section of the computers. She managed to hook it up to the comms. Combined with the archives, she was set to take the place of Ensign Laurent.

The bridge of the _Tepes_ was arranged for a crew of thirty-five. The entire prize crew, save Montoya who had taken over sick bay and was still treating Nimitz, could fit there at once. And today, at 1am shipboard time, they prepared to leave.

McClelland, at the sensors station, reported, “Ma'am, I'm seeing a Peep light cruiser out-system. Records say it's the _Vaubon._ Conquerer-class.” Her fingers tapped across her keyboard. The sensor suite was entirely foreign to her—she'd taken tac training and refreshers as her mandatory education the past couple rounds, but Peep equipment had relatively little in common with the Royal Manticoran Navy's gear. Still, she was muddling through with surprising swiftness. “I also see...I think it's a mine? It might just be a big rock. About a thousand klicks planetward of us.”

“I've got a record of our approach two days ago,” Ensign Brown added from navigation. “We took a pretty winding route in. I'd say it's probably a minefield.”

“Castellano, hail Hades Station and request an egress vector,” Harrington ordered.

“Aye, ma'am,” Castellano answered. She sent the request through text-only, as the approach request had been, and in a minute she had a response. “Egress vector received. Hades Station is asking whether Citizen Committeewoman Ransom is canceling her meeting with Commander Perrault.”

Honor Harrington tapped a finger to her lips. “Send Citizen Committeewoman Ransom's regrets”, she said after a moment, “but her schedule no longer permits the meeting. Ensign Brown, you have your vector. Take us out. Then get us a course to the hyper limit toward Nouveau Paris.”

“Ma'am?” Ensign Brown asked. Despite zir confusion, ze was already entering the course into the computer.

“We're not going to Nouveau Paris, ensign,” she said, suppressing a giggle, “but it's the destination that makes the most sense for Ransom, doesn't it? Alistair, if you could bring up our navigation history. Harkness, we'll need you in Impeller One. DeGroat, Impeller Two.”

The impellers could be controlled from the bridge, technically, but a good engineer could often tweak them for better performance, and that was tricky to do remotely. Efficient operation was so expected from navy ships that it would be obvious if the _Tepes_ moved out under computer control—though they'd certainly switch when they left the system.

“I've got the nav history, Ma'am,” McKeon said, sending it over to her computer. She scanned it briefly.

“Ensign, hail _Vaubon_. Instruct them to return to Barnett.”

The first hour was the most tense. The ship carefully crept forward, maneuvered around unseen mines, and finally came free. _Vaubon_ sent a brief acknowledgement then and began accelerating to the hyper limit, about fifty degrees off from the _Tepes_ 's destination.

In eight hours, _Vaubon_ entered hyper. Three hours later, _Tepes_ followed suit.

* * *

The trip back to friendly space took over five weeks. In that time, the prize crew was busy clearing corpses out of the areas they needed to use, rerouting atmospheric controls to decompress corpse-filled areas, and delving into the depths of the computer banks.

At long last, they emerged at the edge of Yeltsin space, which was, just barely, the nearest Alliance star. Lieutenant Castellano was on the comm immediately. “This is the PNS _Tepes_ under prize crew, coming in under the command of Commodore Honor Harrington. We're friendlies; please don't shoot us.”

She couldn't hear it, but as the message went out to each Grayson ship and station, the entire Grayson navy began to cheer.

**Author's Note:**

> It really peeves me that Harkness's plan was, instead of letting Honor die and everyone else end up on Hades, to get everyone down to Hades and give State Security good reason to kill them all. Here's him being a bit more sensible. And the Peeps showing about as much sense in regards to network security as Weber's original has.
> 
> Carbon monoxide poisoning is no joke. Get a carbon monoxide detector for your home.


End file.
